


blue-black hole

by changelingknight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C, F/F, Not Epilogue Compliant, Road Trips, Vriska character study, only a few weird physics metaphors and medieval lit references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25220674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/changelingknight/pseuds/changelingknight
Summary: "I’ve 8een...stealing Light. Not on purpose.  I haven’t 8een trying to, I mean.  Wherever I go it just.  Stops 8eing light after I’ve 8een there.  8lackouts in my neigh8orhood, malfunctioning traffic lights on my usual routes, dark, cool spots of land where nothing can grow.  I’m taking the Light from the world, I don’t know how, or how to make it stop, but I think.  I think a week ago I made it so, so much worse."Vriska, Rose, a road trip.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Vriska Serket
Comments: 22
Kudos: 27





	1. floor it

It starts off very, very slowly. She’ll enter a room and the fuse’ll blow, or a lightbulb will just happen to run out of power. Troll housing isn’t well lit at the best of times, so it’s brushed off as faulty wiring. Bad luck. Happens to even the very best of us.

It’s when she walks along New Wall Street and all the flashing neon signs go dark in her wake that she realizes something is deeply, deeply wrong.

She should talk to somebody about this, she thinks. She hasn’t left her hive in almost a week, worried she’ll leach the sun right out of the sky. She shouldn’t be worried about this, she thinks. Who the fuck cares if the lights go out? It’s certainly none of her business. Vriska sits at her table and tries not to call Rose. Sunlight slants down through the windows, slathering luminescence onto her recently dyed hair. It drapes around her head as she stares down angrily at her phone.

The table is the only thing in the room not covered in a layer of dust. Vriska lives on the road half the time, wandering to fuck-knows-where on her motorcycle, making trouble and solving it the next day. She’s been blacklisted at every ectobiology lab on the whole planet, but she’s always lucky enough that somebody forgets to lock the doors, or leaves their keycard lying around near the entrance. Even if she couldn’t get in at all, Vriska knows there’s other ways of making things go wrong.

Sometimes she wonders if she’ll ever stop needing to be a hero.  _ I killed him. I killed the 8ad guy.  _ I _ found the treasure. I was  _ important _ , _ she thinks incessantly. It’s not a comfort, because in the back of her head there’s always  _ 8ut I didn’t kill the villain I designed _ . She doesn’t feel guilty about creating him. She’s mad she didn’t get to kill him, like she should have.

She’s mad that half the time she makes trouble one of the others steps in and takes the glory.

  
  


“You don’t have to make the phone call, you know. I can tell when something is off. So can Terezi, although I imagine she isn’t blessed with lurid frescos of the monsters of the week you see fit to develop and unleash.” Rose is fucking insufferable to talk to, but Vriska was and is still too stubborn to take the easy out she offers.

“You called  _ me _ , not the other way around, Lalonde.”

“You had the phone in your hand. You were thinking about it.”

“Don’t go too psycholo-fucker-y on me, or Pyrope will have your fucking head over copyright infringement.”

“What did you even  _ do _ , Vriska?”

“Fucked around with a genetic mix of a dersite 8ishop, Karkat’s failed genesis frog, a polar 8ear, and the deadliest spider I could find in the roadside spider museum.”

“As my dear ecto-brother says, one day I’m going to hunt you for sport.”

“Fuck off. Are you coming or not?”

“I’m going to ask you a question, Vriska, and if you want the ‘8est’ outcome, honesty is the best policy. Do you want help?”

“No.” Vriska’s response is automatic. She thinks about animals that pretend to need help. Animals that are lying. She thinks about her mother. Rose waits on the other end of the line for an uncomfortably long time. Vriska takes the phone away from her ear, starts to lace up her boots.  _ Arming of the hero _ , she thinks. She holds back a bitter laugh.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours until I send in John,” Rose says, finally.

Vriska doesn’t say anything else, and Rose hangs up the phone a few moments later.

  
  


“Uh, Vriska?” Jade Harley is the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes, and there are three of her. She blinks a couple of times, rubs her temples. One Jade is looking down at her with concern, her hand stretched out, ready to pull Vriska to her feet. Vriska stands on her own, taking off on her wings and surveying the landscape.

The crater certainly wasn’t there before. It looks like a ragged claw had dragged a furrow across the face of Earth C. Like some shitty craftsdouche’s shoddy, vagina-shaped bowl. As Vriska surveys the devastation Jade zaps away, and suddenly the crater is a lush green valley. She flies down and finds Jade, who seems distracted by something Vriska can’t perceive.

“Ah fuck,” Jade says. “I should’ve done a sweep for the spores before I did the jungle thing. Oh well, I’ll just keep an eye on this place for a while. You okay, Vriska? You’ve been quiet.”

Vriska thinks about the monster she created here, thinks about the moment in her head where the sword of the Marquise plunged through its heart, the moment its luck ran out, the moment where she snapped her fingers and made the spark to light the kerosene. She thinks about how Jade killed it instead. Probably teleported it into an uninhabitable space. Or into a sun. She doesn’t feel like asking.

“I’m fine,” she snaps. Jade cocks her head. The dog ears swivel, searching. Vriska knows Jade doesn’t believe her, she can read it in the stress-stretch of her skin over her skull. But, small wonder, Jade doesn’t press her further. When she leaves the scene of Vriska’s latest mess, Jade doesn’t bother with the parting jab that Rose always offers.

  
  


A sun-soaked corner of Vriska’s mind tells her the phone will ring a second before it does. She barks out a laugh.  _ Is this what Lalonde’s life is like? _ It’s Rose calling, it’s always Rose calling, like they all elected her ‘official Vriska minder.’ She lets it ring. Rose won’t leave a voicemail. Vriska sits at her table for a few more minutes in the after-vibrations of the phone. She sighs, a little bit theatrically, despite the lack of company, and finally sinks her thumb onto the “call” button.

She drums her fingertips on the table impatiently. After the fourth ring, she wonders if Rose will ignore her call. She wouldn’t put it past her, but just before it cuts to voicemail, Rose’s voice comes through. Vriska cuts her off before she can start their usual pedantic routine.

“I haven’t done anything, I swear to gog Lalonde. Why the fuck did you call me?”

“You called me, Vriska.”

“Don’t pull the fucking semantics. I haven’t done anything in half a perigee, and you can  _ sense _ when I do, so why are you calling?”

“Is something wrong, Vriska?”

“No,” she snarls, automatically, angry now, at Rose for the goddamned song and dance they have to do each time she calls, at herself for wanting to talk to Rose in the first place, for wanting her  _ help _ . She can do this on her own, of course she can. She doesn’t need anybody else to clean up her messes.

“Something is wrong, Vriska.” Rose’s voice brings Vriska back to herself. She’s gripping the phone tightly, her claws likely scoring deep scratches into the screen. “I can’t sense you anymore. I can’t  _ see you _ ,” Rose says, and Vriska feels her stomach drop. “Roxy says it’s like the ‘voidy thing’ that she used to do. The space around you is going dark. I need you to tell me if you’ve noticed anything like that. You should be feeling  _ something _ , at least. Some change in Light.”

“Nope. Nothing. Zilch,” Vriska hears herself saying. The broken lightbulb above her head sways in a sudden breeze. She hopes, fervently, that Rose doesn’t remember where she lives, that she doesn’t put two and two together with the blackouts in her neighborhood. Vriska’s luck hasn’t run out yet it seems, because Rose sighs like she’s given up on Vriska once again. Vriska relaxes, very slightly. “Always nice to catch up, Lalonde. Thanks for calling,” she adds, sarcastically.

“Vriska —” Rose begins and then pauses. She’s silent for long enough that Vriska considers hanging up the phone. “If you happen to notice anything, call. Please.”

“Uh-huh sure will, 8uh-8ye now.”

Vriska laces up her boots, gathers her things. She leaves her phone on the table, grabs her keys. She drives and drives and drives and drives, not daring to look behind her at the pitch-dark stretches of road she leaves in her light-leaching wake.

  
  


Rose’s car is out front when Vriska careens back onto her block about a week later. Vriska laughs, wild and desperate, and hops in the passenger seat. Rose looks at her, takes in the sweat on her brow, the tangled, knotted mess of her hair, the half-done braids she must have begun in fits of unbearable boredom and never managed to follow through on. She’s left her motorcycle in a heap next to the front door. Her boots are covered in dusty blue, and her arms are dotted with bruises. She’s smiling like her old self, and Rose finds her gaze inexplicably caught for a few seconds, like Vriska’s gravity is drawing her in. She’s talking, Rose notices finally.

“Are you listening, Lalonde?” Vriska is saying, and her smile is faltering into something with too much desperation to be a proper Serket Glare™. “Fucking floor it, c’mon, get out of here, we’ve got to  _ move _ .”

Rose presses the gas pedal to the floor. The streets of New New York are plunged into darkness as Rose and Vriska speed out of the city. Far behind them, a shape that burns a hole in the world follows a drying trail of cobalt blue.


	2. maybe tomorrow

Vriska knows Rose wants to ask, but she refuses to make it easy for her. She turns the car radio to a station she knows Rose will hate, and cranks up the volume. The highway thrums, and Rose still doesn’t say anything. It’s starting to get on Vriska’s nerves. She knows how to deal with Rose when she starts getting witty, but the silence is new, and underneath the annoyance, the silence scares her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Vriska says, as if Rose had asked.

“Didn’t think you would.”

“You’re really 8oring as a travel companion, Lalonde.”

“Good, I aim to please.”

“At least tell a girl she’s got a shitty taste in pop music. You’re not giving me much to work with.”

Wordlessly, Rose puts on a CD of poetry set to classical music. Vriska thinks it's atrocious, and tells her as such. Rose smiles, a little tentatively.

  
  


“I’ve 8een...stealing Light.”

Rose and Vriska are sitting on one of the motel beds, because they have to stop somewhere at some point, and it may as well be in a beat-up, family-owned roadside motel. Rose has been reading, and Vriska has been absently untangling the half-finished braids from her hair. As soon as she says it, she looks quickly away, unwilling to meet Rose’s eyes as she continues.

“Not on purpose. I haven’t 8een trying to, I mean. Wherever I go it just. Stops 8eing light after I’ve 8een there. 8lackouts in my neigh8orhood, malfunctioning traffic lights on my usual routes, dark, cool spots of land where nothing can grow. I’m taking the Light from the world, I don’t know how, or how to make it stop, 8ut I think. I think a week ago I made it so, so much worse.”

Rose looks at Vriska for a long, long time, and Vriska thinks she hears _Didn’t you trust me enough to tell me this when I_ asked _you? Do you trust me at all, even now?_ on the very tip of Rose’s tongue, but she says, “I’m not letting you alone with my car. If you wanted a solo mission you should have stayed on your bike.”

It’s filled with the usual Lalonde vitriol, but the bite is less severe, somehow, after Vriska knows what Rose has decided not to say. Sarcasm is so much easier to deal with than sincerity. Vriska rolls her eyes, makes a show of staying still for a few moments before lunging suddenly for Rose’s keys. Rose’s hand is on top of hers. The keys are pressing into Vriska’s palms, she’s gripping them so tightly, but she’s more focused on the warm skin on hers.

The lights in the motel room go out, and Vriska’s eyes are all that Rose can see. She lets go of the keys, shuts her eyes. Palm on palm in the silent darkness.

“You can ask what it was.”

Rose shakes her head, and then says, “Maybe tomorrow.”

  
  


Rose must have gone to sleep at some point, because when she wakes up the darkness is a little bit lighter. It’s before dawn, and she can see the shadowy form of Vriska in the other bed. She’s so still, which Rose hadn’t expected. She navigates outside with Vriska’s phone flashlight, which is far brighter than her own. It feels hot in her hand, like a miniscule sun. Rose sits outside in front of the car, thinking over the last few months.

Terezi had asked her if something was up with Vriska a while ago, a strange expression on her face. She said she didn’t know specifics, but that something was going to go horribly wrong, possibly. Or possibly not, and the horribly wrong thing was just more basic Vriska bullshit. Terezi had shrugged, and Rose had the impression that she cared far less about Vriska’s well-being than she once might have. Rose can’t quite blame her.

It’s not that Vriska keeps to herself, because she’s causing trouble nearly every week, but she’s not one to reach out. Many of them haven’t heard from her in years, by choice. Rose has a running list of folks who no longer are willing to help clean up her messes. She’s thankful for John and Jade, and Roxy, when she can get ahold of her. But they don’t _talk_ to Vriska, not outside of when she sees them at the site of her latest disaster.

Rose hears the door open and is shaken from her thoughts. When she turns and looks at Vriska, there’s a moment when it seems like the sun is right behind her, and she’s shining, and Rose wants to bend toward that light.

“Give me my phone, asshole.” Just like that, the spell breaks, and Vriska is sitting beside her, hand out. Her hair is damp. Rose hands the phone over. It’s maybe 5 am, and there’s no hint of the sun. If Rose looks at Vriska for too long, she starts to glow. “Wanna steal the soaps and pillows?” Vriska says after a long while.

“God yes.”

  
  


Despite what she had said the night before, Rose leaves Vriska in the car while she checks them out of the motel. She takes her time, making pleasant smalltalk with the older troll lady working the front desk. It’s when Rose is about to leave that she notices the woman is blind. Her eyes have been closed the entire time that they were speaking, and Rose had barely made a note of it. As the door swings closed behind her, Rose chances a look back. The troll’s eyes are a bright, pupil-less gold.

“Line was long?” Vriska snarks at her. Rose stares at Vriska for a moment before she gets into the car. A little while ago, she would have heard, clear as day, what Vriska really wanted to say. She doesn’t know anymore, not in the same way, but she still understands. _I was worried you would just leave._

“The presidential cavalcade decided to stop by last night, after we checked in. The suits waylaid me.” Rose reaches for her CD of poetry and doesn’t find it.

“I think I sat on it when I got in, whoops.” Vriska doesn’t sound sorry at all.

It had been a gift from Roxy. Rose presses play on the car radio, fighting the urge to shove Vriska out of the car. A pleasant female voice begins to recite an Elizabeth Bishop poem, and Bach plays in the background. Rose turns to look at Vriska, but she’s staring intently out the window. Thank god Vriska keeps her eyes stubbornly on the landscape, because Rose doesn’t know if she could turn her own gaze back to the road in front of them if Vriska turns around.


	3. sweetest things

“Where are we going?”

“Hey, Lalonde, where’re--”

The question ought to have come up sooner, really. Vriska and Rose look at one another, and maybe because it's so early in the morning, and they couldn’t find a motel last night and had to sleep in the car, but Vriska starts laughing, loud and wild, and Rose joins her. They laugh for too, too long, and in the end, Vriska grabs Rose’s hand tightly, and Rose can see the tears in the corners of Vriska’s eyes.

“What are we running from, Vriska?” Rose asks, with her eyes closed. Vriska lets go of her hand.

“I think I doomed the world again,” she says, instead of answering. Rose waits. “I can feel it, the thing 8ehind us. Like it's a part of me.”

“What did you do?”

“It’s still stealing Light. Now there’s two of us. I… I tried to put it 8ack, all the Light I’ve t8ken. 8ut it went wrong, and now it’s stealing, too. Faster than me. It’s trying to find me, to give me all of th8t Light. To help me eat the sun.” Vriska is shaking, but she keeps her voice level. “Anyway,” she says, taking off her seatbelt, “8een nice catching up, Lalonde, 8ut--”

Rose grabs Vriska’s arm and pulls, hard, before she can flutter up out of the car.

“Clingy, aren’t you?”

“Vriska.” Rose takes a deep breath. Vriska’s wings still, and she settles back into her seat.  _ I’m going to help you. We’re going to destroy it. You don’t have to do this alone. _ Rose says, instead of any of these things, “You dragged me and my car out here. This isn’t a solo mission. Where are we going, Vriska?”

Vriska looks to the highway, scans the signs and billboards. One catches her eye. “First, the world’s largest magic 88all. And after that. West. Let’s go west.”

  
  


Vriska navigates, something in her bones telling her when to turn, to change lanes, to backtrack. Rose lets her drive the night shift. There’s a night when Rose wakes up to the sound of Vriska cursing loudly.

“F8ck, shit, shit, sh8t!”

“Good morning to you, too.” Blearily, Rose looks around for the source of Vriska’s consternation. The lights along the highway are all dark. Even the moon seems more dim than usual. She finds her eyes drawn to Vriska, as they have been ever since they left New New York. The clock in the car reads 3:23.

Vriska is slumped in her seat, and they’re idling on the shoulder. Moths crowd around her head like a halo. “Assholes flew right into my eyes.” Rose reaches up, brushes one bold moth away from the side of Vriska’s face.

She can  _ almost _ See something, in the little bit of Light that she has left. It takes everything she has to break Vriska’s gaze. Vriska pulls the car back out onto the highway proper, and Rose falls asleep to the sound of whatever shitty pop station Vriska’s found playing at three in the morning.

When the sun finally rises, Vriska refuses to meet Rose’s eyes. She pulls the car into a gas station and books it toward the rest stop. Behind her, the electric lights flicker and go out. Vriska comes back with two pairs of sunglasses, four protein bars, and two bags of store-brand cheese and sour cream chips, Rose’s favorite.

“I should go,” she says to Rose, after handing her the chips.

_ How did you know about these? _

“I just  _ know _ , Lalonde. Like you used to.” Vriska responds before realizing that Rose hasn’t spoken. She looks back at the rest stop, at the dead patches of grass, the early morning travelers shivering in the unnatural chill she’s left behind.

“I’m going to go blind.” Rose doesn’t have to be able to See to put this together.

“Yeah. You are.”

“How long do we have before that happens?”

Vriska’s answering laugh is enough to wake the dead. Rose thinks she sees the sun shaking. “Longer with these.”

“These are hideous.”

“You say the sweetest things, Lalonde.”

  
  


She takes over the drive full-time after that. They sleep in truck stops when they can’t find a motel before the sun goes down. Rose wears her shades around Vriska, and if it were earlier in the trip, if neither of them knew what was at stake, she might have made a joke about the family resemblance.

The black hole behind them is growing, Vriska knows. She stops herself from looking at the sun, scared that it’ll vanish if she gives it her attention. The headlights on Rose’s car burned out the other day, and the battery seems to be empty, the engine running on the desperation of a deadbeat demigod.

“Hey, Rose, think we can drain the Light 8ack if we keep the car running on my 8ioluminescence all night?”

Bioluminescence is nearly right. Vriska’s skin is nearly glowing as the space around her withers. “No,” Rose says. “I don’t think so. But take that with a grain of salt, I guess. You’d know more than I would at this point.”

She doesn’t mention Vriska using her first name. She pointedly doesn’t think about it, either. Rose stretches, locks the car, and begins to walk over to the motel check-in office.

Vriska grabs her hand. “It’s going to catch up soon.”

“I’d better call Dave and tell him to invest in whatever nuclear power scheme Jade has concocted this week. He’s got too much money in solar.”

“Good plan.” Neither of them has let go. Rose has her shades on, and Vriska Sees her hand twitch, wanting to remove them. “Don’t.”

She goes to let go of Rose’s hand, but Rose pulls her closer. “Vriska Serket.” They’re tucked in the bubble of Vriska’s shadow. “If you leave in the middle of the night, I’ll hunt you for sport myself.” Rose isn’t whispering, but it’s so intimate, here in the dark that Vriska casts as the sun sets behind her. Behind Rose, the moon creeps, a faint sliver in the nearly-starless night around them. Vriska’s silent for a long, long moment.

“I can’t watch it happen anymore, Rose.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“If you want, leave in the morning. It’s your night to pay.” She doesn’t say anything more out loud. Vriska hears Rose ask her not to leave, hears her thinking,  _ You used my name twice tonight. I don’t think you want to go either. You don’t have to. _

“Fine,” Vriska tells her. Rose lets go of her hand.

  
  


When Rose wakes up, the room is lighter, and Vriska’s bed is empty. The first thing she does is check for her car keys. She finds a note instead.  _ Had shit to take care of near here. I’ll 8e 8ack in the morning _ . In a moment of worry, for her car, she’ll insist, Rose focuses, and tries to See where Vriska is.

For a long, heart-stopping moment, it’s like looking at the sun. Then the brightness fades, and Rose can See her, for the first time in months. The poetry CD is playing softly, and Vriska’s face is focused and intense. Rose watches her drive along unfamiliar highways. Her head starts to hurt. Vriska looks away from the road and meets Rose’s gaze. Bright light fills her vision, and then darkness follows.

She hears the door slam, feels Vriska shaking her, trying to get Rose’s scrambled thoughts back into order. Slowly, she becomes aware of Vriska’s words.

“What the  _ f8ck _ , Lalonde? That must’ve f8cking acceler8ed the process 8y weeks! I told you I’d 8ring your stupid car 8ack, you just had to w8!”

“Vriska?” With her eyes still closed, Rose hears the pause, the breath that catches in Vriska’s throat. Vriska steps away, and Rose finds herself missing the contact. She opens her eyes, and looks down at the floor, and then around the room.

“I’m farsighted now, but no further damage, I think. Were you worried, Vriska?” When Rose turns to look at her, she wonders if she has gone blind after all. Vriska’s shadow is a five-foot sphere of total darkness. She’s entirely obscured, inscrutable. Rose’s first thought, bizarrely, is how much of a road hazard they’re going to be.

“Fuck you,” Vriska says, glad that Rose can’t see the way her shoulders sag with relief.

“Where did you go?”

“Newklahomoa strip clu8.”

“I’m not an idiot, Vriska.”

“Could’ve fooled me with your Seeing stunt.” Rose’s glare doesn’t hit Vriska head-on, hidden as she is. “I checked up on our friend. It passed us a couple of nights ago. Kept going northwest. It’s going to the o8serv8tory.”

“It isn’t interested in you anymore?”

“No, it. It Knows we’re following, and that we’ll go to where it is.”

“We could go home.”

“You could go home.” Vriska turns, so she doesn’t have to face Rose as she says, “ _ I _ have to kill it. It’s mine, after all. No8ody else can take care of this.” Her wings unfurl. Rose doesn’t notice. Once the ball of darkness that marks her starts to float, however, Rose gets the idea. She shouts something after Vriska, but that doesn’t matter as much as what Rose  _ thinks _ after her as she flies out of the motel, and toward the monster of her own making.

_ No trust. Not even now. _


	4. binary system

She flies at night, hiding from the sun in rest stops and roadside museums. For the most part, she follows the roads, if only to find a place to sleep during the day. It’s lonely and familiar, and feels like a bruise she won’t allow to heal. The few moths that can keep up circle her head like a halo, ducking in and out of the darkness around her, diving for the Light. She doesn’t know how they know, and doubts they’d tell her if she could understand them.

“Hey, you’ve gott tto pay for tthatt.” The voice of the teenaged troll behind the counter shakes Vriska from her thoughts. His eyes have been on her since she came in, Vriska realizes suddenly. No one’s looked at her head on since she left Rose, their gazes warping around her shadow. _Finally,_ she had thought, _I make a good Thief._

“Fuck you.” She flutters up to the counter and slams down some bills. When she looks up at the big, round mirror by the door, the surface floods with Light. When her eyes adjust, she sees that she’s glowing like a miniature sun, her shadow nowhere to be seen. _So much for Thievery. D8mn it_. The night isn’t safe anymore, not with her body lit up like a solar flare. She spends the rest of the evening on the roof of the gas station store, close enough to be mistaken for one of the glaring fluorescent lights.

  
  


Rose sighs, and packs up her things. She stands in the room for a few minutes, combing for signs that Vriska’s still there, somehow. She doesn’t find any. When she gets to the front desk, the young man says the room’s been paid for. In the passenger seat of her car is another bag of chips, the CD for a dramatic reading of Anne Carson’s translation of _The Bacchae_ , and handwritten directions back to New New York. Rose starts the car and pulls onto the highway.

She doesn’t know where Vriska’s gone, doesn’t know what observatory she was talking about. She does know that the black hole went northwest, and that Vriska will follow. Rose sticks the CD into the car radio, and tunes out the wind and the dust and her thoughts. She takes the westbound ramp.

There isn’t a trail of drying cobalt blood to follow, or a path of heedless desecration. Vriska’s presence in the world is so much softer than it’s been. It scares her, just a little. Rose sleeps in her car when she can, and when she doesn’t, makes sure that the motel rooms all have two beds. She doesn’t need Sight to Know that Vriska won’t be back just like that, but she pays for the double rooms anyway.

One morning, she feels gravity shift. The sun doesn’t move, nobody else on the highway seems to be affected, but Rose feels it like the pumping of her heart. It pulls her off an exit, onto a northbound service road. Far, far ahead, she sees the sun on the horizon. She looks up, and sees it again, high in the sky, nearing the zenith. The star ahead of her is faintly, faintly blue. Rose books a double room that night.

  
  


Vriska sits on the other bed and twists her fingers together, an anxious gesture that looks strange on her. She and Rose haven’t spoken, but Vriska can hear everything Rose struggles not to say. _You thought I was going to go back? Without you? That I would just forget this, and go home? Do you understand why I’m here? Why I’m really,_ really _here?_

The silence weighs her down, stops her from bursting through the door and flying out into the night. It’s a terrible idea, she knows. She wouldn’t make it a minute before the moths got a hold on her. As Rose stands and prepares for bed, Vriska wonders whether the moths are better, after all.

The lights in the room don’t work, but Vriska’s glowing enough to light up their room and the three adjacent. The bathroom door is open anyway, to let more of the Light in. She watches Rose brush her teeth, wash her hands, start to get changed. Rose’s thoughts go quiet, losing herself in routine. Vriska hears, _Don’t you know you’re like the sun?_ She clears her throat.

“I wouldn’t 8e a good sun, Rose.”

Rose turns. Her sunglasses are back in the car. She looks right at Vriska, and doesn’t flinch. “I don’t think that’s true. I know you don’t want to be.” _You’re a good enough sun for me_ , Rose doesn’t say. Vriska walks towards Rose, takes her hands. Palm on palm. “Don’t go,” Rose says, and it takes both of them a moment to realize that the words are out in the air, not just in their minds.

“Okay.” Vriska’s hands move up to Rose’s forearms and grip tightly. Rose is keenly aware of her pulse beneath Vriska’s fingers, of the deep rhythm of her breaths. Every sense attuned to the shining star before her. She feels the thought take shape, watches Vriska nod. Rose leans forward, and kisses her.

  
  


They reach the observatory a few nights later. Rose’s car finally dies a few miles out along the winding dirt road to the building. It’s late afternoon, and they can see the telescope in the distance. Vriska flutters a few inches off the ground, and Rose can’t see the way her shoulders tense, the way her eyes dart from the horizon to the sun and back, but she does sense a shift in Vriska’s silence.

“We-- _I_ know you try to fix your own mistakes,” Rose says. She’s left the sunglasses in the car, not that she’s needed them since the motel reunion. All she can make out are two bright orbs of light, one gold, one blue.

“Not mist8kes. I do this shit on purpose, Lalonde.” The sun is setting, but Rose feels its warmth full-force, walking with Vriska like this. “And I don’t do it for you.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes. Rose reaches up, her hand searching for Vriska’s. When Vriska obliges, Rose pulls her to the earth. Laces their fingers together. The observatory gets closer.

“Rose?” Vriska stops, lets go of Rose’s hand. Bends down to tie her shoes. _Arming of the hero_. The door is a few feet before them, and she can feel the boiling, burning Light that’s waiting.

“Vriska?” Vriska looks Rose up and down, feels the pang of guilt under her ribs as she takes in Rose’s listless, sightless gaze.

“Don’t f8cking die, alright?”

  
  


None of her abominations were much for speeches, but the black hole reacts to Vriska in a way nothing else ever has. It warps and shifts, and suddenly, it looks like her, a silhouette in absolute darkness. It doesn’t move. The observatory should be creaking with gravity, but it isn’t. This black hole is only after Light.

Vriska charges, teeth bared, sword flashing into her hand. Instead of hitting it head-on, she finds herself orbiting, unable to get closer. A balancing binary system. She charges again, again, again, and all that happens is she glows a little brighter. Vriska has never felt so seen. She lets her sword vanish back into her sylladex, and snarls.

Nobody pulls the lever, but the great skylight of the observatory opens, giving Vriska and the black hole a perfect view of the sun. It looks pinned to the horizon, a quivering beetle in an entomologist’s box. Vriska feels the Light of it surging toward her, feels it hit her, feels it like ten times the weight of the world, and like no weight at all.

With sun-sharp clarity, she turns to Rose. “I need your help,” Vriska says. The last time she said that, she wasn’t more than a wriggler. She thinks about animals that pretend to need help. She thinks of her mother. She thinks of herself. “8ut you have to promise you won’t die. Think you can handle it, Lalonde?”

Rose’s eyes are shining, glinting gold and blue. She looks straight at Vriska anyway, and both of them know it’s more than luck. “Let me check my schedule,” Rose says. She doesn’t look away. “Hmm. Well, I suppose I have the time to spare. And I think I can manage not dying.”

Vriska laughs, wild and desperate. “F8ck you, Rose.”

“That we’d have to schedule for next week.”

“Rose, I need you to run into the 8lack hole. I know, it’s a 8atshit idea, 8ut it’ll work, I’ll--”

“Okay.”

“--get you out, you just have to trust--. Damn. Okay. Okay. I’ll 8ring you 8ack, Lalonde. I promise.”

Vriska hauls Rose to her feet and points her at the black hole. Rose walks forward, eyes closed. In her periphery, she can sense Vriska’s starlight. She takes another step, another step, and then it’s like that Light was never there at all.

  
  


There is a calm inside of the black hole, before the sudden cold hits. Rose feels it from the inside of her skin as the pressure beyond her body drops. She cannot breathe, cannot see. The cold is uniform, keeps her from knowing up from down, whether her feet are still planted on the ground.

Warmth catches her square in the chest, and pulls. The world rushes back to her, flooding with gold.

Behind Rose, the black hole is collapsing, all of the Light pulled from it in that same instant. Vriska’s glow is fading, first slowly, then all at once, until she’s just herself, until the only brilliance is in her smile. Now unimpeded, the sun slips across the horizon, and night falls.


	5. enough luck

A bag of cheese and sour cream chips lands on Rose’s lap. Two weeks later, and they’re still a few hundred miles out from New New York. Neither of them expected it to work when Vriska tried hotwiring the car, but they must have earned at least enough luck to get them home.

“More unfortunate news, Vriska?”

“You can’t ask that every time I get you chips, Lalonde.” Vriska turns the car on, and Rose fiddles with the radio, tuning it to Vriska’s favorite pop station. They drive with the sunroof open, and Rose’s eyes get caught in the way Vriska’s hair streams out behind them. On the whim of a breathy sort of gravity, Rose leans in and kisses Vriska on the cheek.

“Thank you.”

Vriska turns, her eyes wide, her smile wider. “8etter 8e careful Rose, or I might get the idea you like me.”

“Keep your eyes on the road, Serket.”

Rose still insists on booking double rooms, even if they spend most nights curled into each other’s arms. It’s an unspoken rule that the lights go off after dark. The moon is often bright enough for Rose to make out Vriska’s outline, and that’s all she needs. Vriska shuts her eyes tight when the sun goes down, wondering if she’ll ever manage a nocturnal schedule again.

When the sun’s up, there’s rarely a still moment. They make their way through the Bishop CD,  _ The Bacchae _ , “ABBA’s Greatest Hits,” and the first 68 chapters of  _ Moby Dick _ . When Rose drives, Vriska tilts the passenger seat all the way back and falls asleep, head tilted at an awkward angle that always means a stiff neck when she wakes up.

“Oh,  _ f8ck _ , ow.”

Rose lets out a snort, eyes flicking to Vriska beside her. Vriska stretches like a cat, shaking her head and shoulders, reaching her arms out toward the dashboard, leaving faint claw marks. Vriska blinks a few times, yawns, and then, so very casually, leans over and kisses Rose at the edge of her right eye. Rose swerves and nearly crashes the car. Vriska leans further, kisses the corner of her left eye.

They’re idling on the shoulder of the road, and it’s 3:23 in the afternoon.

“Eyes on the road, Rose.”

Rose turns the car off and kisses Vriska properly.

  
  


“Hey, the power’s 8ack on,” she says to herself, to break the silence after Rose’s car is gone. It feels strange to be in her hive. It’s never felt much like a home, and neither did her hive back on Alternia. Her motorcycle’s out in front, still spattered with traces of her blood. Vriska empties her fridge and orders takeout. The sun goes down. She turns the lights off and sleeps.

  
  


Rose’s car is out front when Vriska leaves her hive a week later. “Missed me that much?” she teases. Her voice is lighter, free of weight and desperation. Rose smiles.

“You called me, Serket. Not the other way around.”

Vriska just laughs, and jumps into the passenger seat. For a moment, it looks like the sun is right behind her. Like she’s shining.

“What’re you waiting for? Roxy said Dave threatened to eat all the hotdogs.”

Rose presses her foot down on the gas pedal, and bends toward the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there we have it folks! its been a long time coming but I'm glad we've made it here.


End file.
